Other blogs by Idealist

Last week we were very fortunate to be able to bring together our whole staff for a retreat in one of our home cities: Portland, OR.

Almost the whole team.

Before the retreat, we laid out seven goals. They included: Break out of our normal day-to-day work and recharge; challenge ourselves to think in new ways and learn new things; celebrate our successes; reflect on the past four months; look ahead at the next four; go in-depth on topics and projects that have organization-wide significance; be together and have fun!

A typical day in Portland: our site developers look at a list of upcoming projects in order to prioritize them.

On the final morning of the retreat, we got out of the office and into the fresh air. (Pictured: Mike, Craig, Josh, Minnie, and Enzo.)

We surveyed the whole staff ahead of time to get input on the agenda and goals. People from every team led sessions on everything from knowledge sharing to agile software development to volunteer recruitment and appreciation.

Amy, facilitator extraordinaire, helped us develop ground rules for the whole retreat; Josh's wiki-like brain was put to the test during a trivia game.

You don’t have to sell yourself anymore, force yourself to fit into jobs and organizations, or be three different people: you on the job, you at home, and you looking for a job. Imagine all of the time and energy you’ll be freeing up by not doing work and life “costume changes” day after day.

I talked to Steve recently, who added:

When I speak to job seekers, I tell them two important things:

1. One, you’ve got to ‘own’ your career. No one is going to care about it more than you.

2. If you want the ‘silver bullet’ that will land you your dream job, here it is: You need to do some quality reflection to understand your skills and values and then to figure out how you can really make a difference in the world.

We describe this worklife attitude adjustment as Career Entrepreneurism.